2016 Presidential Election Discussion Thread V.2

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This thread is for the consolidation of similar and ongoing discussions regarding news, polls, and debates from the 2016 presidential election. Everyone is welcome to post and discuss purely electoral content, such as updated polling, campaign stories, and the like in this thread, rather than spread individually across the boards. This thread is all-inclusive and I ask that you please refrain from trolling posters you disagree with into complete oblivion or otherwise completely derailing the thread. I have to commend everyone who participated in the first thread for keeping discussion relatively mature and on-topic without a hiccup and I have high hopes that can be repeated. You can find the original thread for reference here.

The 2016 Presidential Tracker organized by @wacky1980 can be found here.

I was hoping to wait on making this thread once the new forum settled down, but the election goes on regardless.

Tonight's news is the GOP debate tonight. It can be watched live here. At this moment, the undercard debate (complete with a Jim Gilmore appearance!) is wrapping up. The main debate will follow and as I understand, frontrunner Donald Trump will not be in attendance.

The main GOP debate has started, and, if anyone was wondering, the first question was a super slow softball to Ted Cruz about Donald Trump's absence in the debate.

Edit: And then Jeb Bush claimed he was the only candidate that stood up to Trump, but only now that Trump is not on the stage to respond. Also, Jeb Bush is establishment because his mom is Barbara Bush. True facts.

As we get ever closer to the Iowa caucuses, it seems like Democrats are getting happier with the way the GOP race is turning out. As if a bunch of Democrats who were skeptical about Trumpapalooza being a realistic thing suddenly realize it is very much happening.

Realizing Donald Trump is the most likely GOP is like finding out Santa Claus actually is real.

The moderators really went after Cruz and Rubio (complete with pre-assembled clips of the two candidates' prior statements conflicting with their current platforms), and really tried to motivate the other candidates to pile on as well.

It felt like the moderators threw Bush, Kasich, Paul, and Christie a lot of bones.

Carson was a complete afterthought and the questions he was thrown seemed almost as if out of pity

I'm sorry but I still can't believe Jim Gilmore was allowed to appear in the undercard debate.

If I had to choose who won the debate, I would say it was Trump. He managed to suck out some of the air by hosting his own solo event a few blocks away while at the same time with relatively few attacks lobbed his way. This is while the other two front runners were getting beat on from every angle (and while the other four minus Carson were given a bit a a chance to make themselves likable and grow their small shares of the pie). It may well be the case that this debate reinforces his lead by equalizing everyone else. Or I could be wrong. Any thoughts?

In most circumstances, the frontrunner traditionally tries to limit debate appearances to (a) limit other candidates' exposure and (b) limit the number of opportunities to throw the lead by doing something stupid. And in almost every case, the other candidates and the media criticize the frontrunner for being a coward until the frontrunner concedes to appear in any number of debates.

This is probably the first scenario where the frontrunner actually succeeded in dodging a debate (the last one before the Iowa no less) without taking any major flack for it because Trump totally embraced it (and the very convenient blood feud with Fox) and went on the attack rather than any attempt to ignore it until it went away.

Clinton and Trump will probably win Iowa on Monday, which is pretty amazing for both, but for different reasons.

It's impressive Clinton can turn one of her weakest states from 2008 into a winner for her, especially considered her ill-fated strategy of not trying in primaries with caucus systems.

Trump, where do you start? Everything about his campaign is amazing, but more so because conventional wisdom has said if he was going to win a state (and that was once considered laughable), it would be New Hampshire, not Iowa. Now, he's expanded probably to victory among the religious conservative Republicans of Iowa.

Bernie's been neck-to-neck with Hillary within the past month so it's much less set in stone about a Hillary victory. It'll be crucial for her to make wise decisions in February if she wants her poll numbers to be high enough to pose a threat.

Trump seems more absolute since Cruz dropped big time and is facing some backlash from this week. Not sure if voters will go all in on Trump or if they want a safer vote with Rubio or Cruz, but he's been a front runner for the past year so unless there's any surprises from unspoken supporters for other candidates, Trump could be the one to win Iowa.

It isn't just her future decisions that will affect the outcome, but her past ones. That email thing is hanging over her head. I saw someone posted that emails that are considered highly classified now may not have been when put on her server, but that would negatively comment on her foresight.

The final Selzer poll has predicted the Democratic and Republican winners of the Iowa caucuses since 1988, with one exception. They foresee Clinton and Trump winning tomorrow. I consider that a safe bet.

Clinton winning Iowa probably means she wins the nomination, and also winning it easier than she could have.

It isn't just her future decisions that will affect the outcome, but her past ones. That email thing is hanging over her head. I saw someone posted that emails that are considered highly classified now may not have been when put on her server, but that would negatively comment on her foresight.

The Hillary emails thing is overblown according to the best objective experts I can find on the matter (such as the head of the government secrecy division of the Federation of American Scientists).

There's a lot of complexities about it. For example, there's a difference between classified documents and classified information. One agency in the federal government can consider docs/info classified, while another agency in the federal government can disagree with that. Even if it's the exact same information, it matters whether a person who handled the information got it FROM THE AGENCY THAT CONSIDERS IT CLASSIFIED or if they got the information from the agency that does NOT consider it classified.

Furthermore, it's legally permissible to remove UNclassified information from classified docs. And through all of this, the Cabinet Secretary has a level of discretion at her disposal.

Hillary's email scandal will follow more so in the general election than with the primary. Bernie's poll increase came less from Hillary's scandals and more from Hillary fatigue. She's been coasting along, leaving any of the baggage that weighs her down unacknowledged as she whips, naynays, and dabs in PR stunts while Bernie has been the most direct with his platform and goals in the White House. If her past scandals had any impact on the primary race, her numbers would've been as low as O'Malley's since the whole email story erupted.

The thing with Bernie is that he is much closer to the actual Democratic values than Hillary is. When you look at her she is a corporate elitist who has been funded by the big banks since day one. But that doesnt matter to her supporters. THey are to caught up in FIRST! WOMAN! PRESIDENT! to care about reality.

Her email problem is only getting bigger to. Hundreds of emails were found to be classified, but this latest batch is a step above that. They cant even release some of them because even if they were redacted they would be harmful to national security, they are that classified. In the primaries it probably wont matter, but in the general it will. She already has this image of being a corrupt politician, and this email thing just plays into that image. People can easily connect to this kind of scanale because its something so many people understand. This isnt some deep-politics scandal that is tough for the average person to get, this is her using an email system run out of her bathroom.
That is, of course, assuming that the FBI doesnt torpedo her campaign before the primaries are even over. And that is far from guaranteed if you listen to the leaks coming from them these days.

I could never lie to you, You're like the greatest pot smoking republican hippie I know.-1POOH4U